June 28, 2025 • 11 mins
Ashley Garner is based in Wilmington North Carolina where he runs a growing investment portfolio. He's recently made the jump from 30 unit properties to 200 unit properties and is scaling the business systems to match the new portfolio. Our discussion centers around investment mandate and scaling up. To connect with Ashley, visit https://www.abgmultifamily.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the weekend edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Wilmington, NC.
Welcome to the show, Ashley Garner.
Hey Victor, thanks for having me.
I I really appreciate being a guest today.
(00:23):
Well, great to have you here. And Ashley, you and I have known
each other for a number of years.
You're definitely scaling up your business.
I'm keen to talk about that. But maybe before we do, perhaps
give a little bit of your back story and how you got to this
point in your journey. Yeah, well, great.
I literally kind of grew up in this business in a in a real mom
and pop way. When I was in junior high and
(00:44):
high school, my dad started buying old houses and we would
internally subdivide them into student rentals near West
Virginia University. And we still own some of those
houses today. But of course, that was very
hands on and limited by, you know, how much you personally
could do. And since then, as I started
buying things on my own account,I took the normal route of
(01:06):
single families and duplexes andtriplexes and then then A10
unit. And then I started buying units
in there in the 30 units count. And so the more I got, the more
I liked it, the more I wanted toscale up even larger.
So the most recent acquisition is a 196 unit property.
And that's more, you know, rightnow we're trying to target that
(01:28):
200 units or or more property. So that's that's kind of how I
got here in a, in a real quick nutshell.
I love it. So when you look at acquiring an
asset, anytime you acquire an asset, there's an obvious
question. The first is what's the exit
strategy? So when you say what's the exit
strategy, then the question is who is the ultimate buyer?
(01:52):
You're not going to get an institutional buyer with a 30
unit property, certainly not a triplex.
So as you're looking to scale up, are your exit strategies
changing? How?
Walk me through that thought process.
Yeah, good question. So certainly the larger the
property, the more you, you, youopen the market to like a more
(02:12):
sophisticated buyer and a different type of financing and,
and all of these things. So yes, that's very much
something that we focus on. We also are learning as we go
that there's a large difference between the buyer between a
class AB and C property. You know, not everybody wants to
buy AC property in a smaller market.
Sometimes the money's harder to raise, the financing is harder
(02:34):
to get, blah, blah, blah. The cash flow is normally better
than you know, the percents of returns are normally higher, but
you don't have certain buyers that are interested.
That being said, there's not as much competition to buy them
sometimes either. So we kind of like we're, we're
noticing all of these things real first hand in real life.
(02:54):
It's pretty interesting. Absolutely.
So as you're looking at further acquisitions, talk a little bit
about markets that you're focusing on.
Some people only buy in primary markets.
What's What's the investment mandate?
So we live in our in our base inNorth Carolina.
And North Carolina happens to also be one of those states
(03:16):
where investors like to invest because it checks all the boxes
with the inbound net migration population, the job growth, you
know, the crime statistics, it'spretty landlord friendly, those
types of things. And we know it and we're
comfortable here. That doesn't mean that we
wouldn't look in other places, but mainly it's North Carolina.
(03:36):
And again, as we grow, I feel that we're being that we're
starting to focus on the even the larger markets in North
Carolina for the reasons that wementioned before that you know,
on the exit, it's maybe easier to find a buyer than it is in
some of the smaller markets. Well, that that's certainly
true. I mean, if I think about the
(03:57):
primary markets in North Carolina, the Raleigh, Durham
area for sure tops the list. Strong jobs, growth in multiple
different segments of the economy, in medical and
pharmaceutical, in high tech. There's just many, It's not just
one economic anchor. This is not a one company town,
right, right. You've got the universities,
(04:18):
multiple universities. So it's really a broadly based
economy versus maybe a smaller community like where you live
that has a much narrower economic base.
For sure. And and maybe that's why I only
own one thing here in the town that I live in.
(04:39):
I've owned it for a while and it's a great investment.
But you're, you're exactly right.
You know, there's more, you feellike there's a little more risk
when there's not as broad of support for filling up your
units. Absolutely.
So as you fast, as you've taken this leap from the 30 units to
the 200 unit properties, what changed in the organization?
(05:00):
Well, you know, you probably can't make it out, but this
whiteboard behind me has a lot of scribbling on it.
And we're we're literally in themidst of change.
And what we found is, you know, when you're smaller, you can
kind of wear all the hats yourself and you can do all of
these things that need to be done.
You know, right here on the board, we've got operations,
(05:22):
finance and accounting, marketing and investor relations
and then acquisitions. So we were doing all of those
things ourselves and when I say it myself, it was it was myself
and another partner. So just kind of a two man show
as we grow and we spend a lot oftime on operations obviously and
we we outsource all of that to 3rd party property managers.
(05:45):
We spend a lot of time on accounting and finance and we
have outsourced you know CPACFO vendor.
But what we don't have right noware, are is the marketing person
or group, because we were just doing that all ourselves and we
don't have that acquisitions anddeal flow designated person.
So we're we're literally in the process of trying to figure out,
(06:09):
do we outsource those two thingsor do we hire them in house?
It's the same stuff. It's just so much more of it
that we can't do it with just the two of us.
When I think about anyone who's given work to do in an
organization, you know, often people say we'll just go ahead
and get a bunch of virtual assistants.
And when you do that, you're delegating work at the task
(06:32):
level. And that's very different than
delegating responsibility. And, and I find that when you're
in that in between phase, looking to grow, looking to
outsource certain functions, it's very hard to build a
sustainable organization on rented talent #1 and #2 if
you're not delegating the full responsibility, it always comes
(06:54):
back to you. You outsource a task, they come
back to you and say, here it is,boss, is it good?
Right. So then the leverage that you
get is actually pretty minimal. Yes, and we are that is spot on
to where we are right now and you as we use virtual assistants
and things will come back to me in my inbox or on my desk and
(07:15):
waiting now for me to approve them or edit them.
And it's almost as bad as it wasbefore.
You know, I've spent the money to get it that far, but I still
have it still depends on me. So that's very limiting and and
that for those reasons, I feel like in certain positions we're
looking to bring someone in thatcan become a part of our culture
(07:37):
and understand the responsibility and kind of run
with it. Which then becomes the the
limiting factor on growth, because there's a bit of a myth
that you can grow organically, you know, from 1:00 to 2:00 to
3:00 to 4:00. And, and at least in our
experience, what happens is you end up getting stuck in a low
Earth orbit that you never escape.
So in fact, in some ways it's almost easier to go bigger
(08:00):
because those bigger projects actually afford the talent that
are that's necessary to sustain the organization.
Yes, indeed. You know, another interesting
thing that I've thought of in addition to those ideas is that
I remember why I wanted to become a real estate investor
and a cash flow investor initially.
(08:22):
And that was for the financial freedom and the use of my time
the way I wanted it to be. And I can, I can now see first
hand that if you're not careful,you can create this monster that
you have to feed. And now you're busier and more
stressed out than you ever were.And that's not the, that's not
why I do this. So, you know, I've got to get
(08:42):
myself, I'm the pinch point. Now everything comes to me and
I've got to get it so that the organization kind of flows.
That's exactly right. I mean, the, the, the myth of
passive income is just that. It's a myth because there's
nothing passive about these businesses at all.
Oh yeah, for sure. I love it.
So as you're looking at your investment mandate, where are
(09:08):
the, how are the, where are the opportunities coming from that
you're looking at? Yeah, yeah.
So, well, we have maybe multiplesources.
Yeah. We've purchased things with
direct to seller mailings. We've purchased things through
that were on the MLS listed by aresidential broker.
We purchase things through the larger commercial and multi
(09:31):
family brokers, the Cushman and Wakefield's if you will.
And so and we've got good relationships with all of those
folks. But of course, you know, if
something is on the market then you know, it's it, it's, it
tends to probably be passed overby the people who have already
tried to get it with the direct to seller stuff.
And usually the values are maybea little out of whack.
(09:54):
So it's a little tougher to makethe numbers work with those.
So we really, you know, one of the things I want to do with
this marketing column that I've got back here on the whiteboard
is really gear up that direct toseller research.
Again, the the best deals I've ever bought have been in that
that type of setup. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. Well, actually, if folks want to
(10:17):
connect, if they want to learn more, what's the best way?
Yeah, probably the best way is just to go to my website
whichisabgmultifamily.com and onthere you can click it and see
our current deals. We can, you know, you can sign
up and become a part of our the investment club and things like
(10:38):
that, that we can stay in touch.And in fact, tomorrow we're
filming A webinar about how to use a self-directed IRA and your
retirement funds to invest in real estate or whatever you
want. But in ours, in our case, you
know, we talk about real estate.So we do stuff like that a lot,
trying to educate people so thatthey can make some headway in
(11:00):
pursuing this financial freedom.Love it.
Well, Ashley, great to connect. And for the listeners at home,
definitely connect with ashley.garner@abgmultifamily.com.
The link will be in the show notes.
And in the meantime, have an awesome rest of your weekend, go
make some great things happen, and we'll talk to you again
tomorrow.
Welcome to the Real Estate Espresso podcast, your morning
shot of what's new in the world of real estate investing.
I'm your host, Victor Minash. This is the weekend edition
where we interview notable people from the world of real
estate investing. Today is no exception.
We have a great guest all the way from Wilmington, NC.
Welcome to the show, Ashley Garner.
Hey Victor, thanks for having me.
I I really appreciate being a guest today.
(00:23):
Well, great to have you here. And Ashley, you and I have known
each other for a number of years.
You're definitely scaling up your business.
I'm keen to talk about that. But maybe before we do, perhaps
give a little bit of your back story and how you got to this
point in your journey. Yeah, well, great.
I literally kind of grew up in this business in a in a real mom
and pop way. When I was in junior high and
(00:44):
high school, my dad started buying old houses and we would
internally subdivide them into student rentals near West
Virginia University. And we still own some of those
houses today. But of course, that was very
hands on and limited by, you know, how much you personally
could do. And since then, as I started
buying things on my own account,I took the normal route of
(01:06):
single families and duplexes andtriplexes and then then A10
unit. And then I started buying units
in there in the 30 units count. And so the more I got, the more
I liked it, the more I wanted toscale up even larger.
So the most recent acquisition is a 196 unit property.
And that's more, you know, rightnow we're trying to target that
(01:28):
200 units or or more property. So that's that's kind of how I
got here in a, in a real quick nutshell.
I love it. So when you look at acquiring an
asset, anytime you acquire an asset, there's an obvious
question. The first is what's the exit
strategy? So when you say what's the exit
strategy, then the question is who is the ultimate buyer?
(01:52):
You're not going to get an institutional buyer with a 30
unit property, certainly not a triplex.
So as you're looking to scale up, are your exit strategies
changing? How?
Walk me through that thought process.
Yeah, good question. So certainly the larger the
property, the more you, you, youopen the market to like a more
(02:12):
sophisticated buyer and a different type of financing and,
and all of these things. So yes, that's very much
something that we focus on. We also are learning as we go
that there's a large difference between the buyer between a
class AB and C property. You know, not everybody wants to
buy AC property in a smaller market.
Sometimes the money's harder to raise, the financing is harder
(02:34):
to get, blah, blah, blah. The cash flow is normally better
than you know, the percents of returns are normally higher, but
you don't have certain buyers that are interested.
That being said, there's not as much competition to buy them
sometimes either. So we kind of like we're, we're
noticing all of these things real first hand in real life.
(02:54):
It's pretty interesting. Absolutely.
So as you're looking at further acquisitions, talk a little bit
about markets that you're focusing on.
Some people only buy in primary markets.
What's What's the investment mandate?
So we live in our in our base inNorth Carolina.
And North Carolina happens to also be one of those states
(03:16):
where investors like to invest because it checks all the boxes
with the inbound net migration population, the job growth, you
know, the crime statistics, it'spretty landlord friendly, those
types of things. And we know it and we're
comfortable here. That doesn't mean that we
wouldn't look in other places, but mainly it's North Carolina.
(03:36):
And again, as we grow, I feel that we're being that we're
starting to focus on the even the larger markets in North
Carolina for the reasons that wementioned before that you know,
on the exit, it's maybe easier to find a buyer than it is in
some of the smaller markets. Well, that that's certainly
true. I mean, if I think about the
(03:57):
primary markets in North Carolina, the Raleigh, Durham
area for sure tops the list. Strong jobs, growth in multiple
different segments of the economy, in medical and
pharmaceutical, in high tech. There's just many, It's not just
one economic anchor. This is not a one company town,
right, right. You've got the universities,
(04:18):
multiple universities. So it's really a broadly based
economy versus maybe a smaller community like where you live
that has a much narrower economic base.
For sure. And and maybe that's why I only
own one thing here in the town that I live in.
(04:39):
I've owned it for a while and it's a great investment.
But you're, you're exactly right.
You know, there's more, you feellike there's a little more risk
when there's not as broad of support for filling up your
units. Absolutely.
So as you fast, as you've taken this leap from the 30 units to
the 200 unit properties, what changed in the organization?
(05:00):
Well, you know, you probably can't make it out, but this
whiteboard behind me has a lot of scribbling on it.
And we're we're literally in themidst of change.
And what we found is, you know, when you're smaller, you can
kind of wear all the hats yourself and you can do all of
these things that need to be done.
You know, right here on the board, we've got operations,
(05:22):
finance and accounting, marketing and investor relations
and then acquisitions. So we were doing all of those
things ourselves and when I say it myself, it was it was myself
and another partner. So just kind of a two man show
as we grow and we spend a lot oftime on operations obviously and
we we outsource all of that to 3rd party property managers.
(05:45):
We spend a lot of time on accounting and finance and we
have outsourced you know CPACFO vendor.
But what we don't have right noware, are is the marketing person
or group, because we were just doing that all ourselves and we
don't have that acquisitions anddeal flow designated person.
So we're we're literally in the process of trying to figure out,
(06:09):
do we outsource those two thingsor do we hire them in house?
It's the same stuff. It's just so much more of it
that we can't do it with just the two of us.
When I think about anyone who's given work to do in an
organization, you know, often people say we'll just go ahead
and get a bunch of virtual assistants.
And when you do that, you're delegating work at the task
(06:32):
level. And that's very different than
delegating responsibility. And, and I find that when you're
in that in between phase, looking to grow, looking to
outsource certain functions, it's very hard to build a
sustainable organization on rented talent #1 and #2 if
you're not delegating the full responsibility, it always comes
(06:54):
back to you. You outsource a task, they come
back to you and say, here it is,boss, is it good?
Right. So then the leverage that you
get is actually pretty minimal. Yes, and we are that is spot on
to where we are right now and you as we use virtual assistants
and things will come back to me in my inbox or on my desk and
(07:15):
waiting now for me to approve them or edit them.
And it's almost as bad as it wasbefore.
You know, I've spent the money to get it that far, but I still
have it still depends on me. So that's very limiting and and
that for those reasons, I feel like in certain positions we're
looking to bring someone in thatcan become a part of our culture
(07:37):
and understand the responsibility and kind of run
with it. Which then becomes the the
limiting factor on growth, because there's a bit of a myth
that you can grow organically, you know, from 1:00 to 2:00 to
3:00 to 4:00. And, and at least in our
experience, what happens is you end up getting stuck in a low
Earth orbit that you never escape.
So in fact, in some ways it's almost easier to go bigger
(08:00):
because those bigger projects actually afford the talent that
are that's necessary to sustain the organization.
Yes, indeed. You know, another interesting
thing that I've thought of in addition to those ideas is that
I remember why I wanted to become a real estate investor
and a cash flow investor initially.
(08:22):
And that was for the financial freedom and the use of my time
the way I wanted it to be. And I can, I can now see first
hand that if you're not careful,you can create this monster that
you have to feed. And now you're busier and more
stressed out than you ever were.And that's not the, that's not
why I do this. So, you know, I've got to get
(08:42):
myself, I'm the pinch point. Now everything comes to me and
I've got to get it so that the organization kind of flows.
That's exactly right. I mean, the, the, the myth of
passive income is just that. It's a myth because there's
nothing passive about these businesses at all.
Oh yeah, for sure. I love it.
So as you're looking at your investment mandate, where are
(09:08):
the, how are the, where are the opportunities coming from that
you're looking at? Yeah, yeah.
So, well, we have maybe multiplesources.
Yeah. We've purchased things with
direct to seller mailings. We've purchased things through
that were on the MLS listed by aresidential broker.
We purchase things through the larger commercial and multi
(09:31):
family brokers, the Cushman and Wakefield's if you will.
And so and we've got good relationships with all of those
folks. But of course, you know, if
something is on the market then you know, it's it, it's, it
tends to probably be passed overby the people who have already
tried to get it with the direct to seller stuff.
And usually the values are maybea little out of whack.
(09:54):
So it's a little tougher to makethe numbers work with those.
So we really, you know, one of the things I want to do with
this marketing column that I've got back here on the whiteboard
is really gear up that direct toseller research.
Again, the the best deals I've ever bought have been in that
that type of setup. Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. Well, actually, if folks want to
(10:17):
connect, if they want to learn more, what's the best way?
Yeah, probably the best way is just to go to my website
whichisabgmultifamily.com and onthere you can click it and see
our current deals. We can, you know, you can sign
up and become a part of our the investment club and things like
(10:38):
that, that we can stay in touch.And in fact, tomorrow we're
filming A webinar about how to use a self-directed IRA and your
retirement funds to invest in real estate or whatever you
want. But in ours, in our case, you
know, we talk about real estate.So we do stuff like that a lot,
trying to educate people so thatthey can make some headway in
(11:00):
pursuing this financial freedom.Love it.
Well, Ashley, great to connect. And for the listeners at home,
definitely connect with ashley.garner@abgmultifamily.com.
The link will be in the show notes.
And in the meantime, have an awesome rest of your weekend, go
make some great things happen, and we'll talk to you again
tomorrow.
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